"As I See It Today" could be the title of this new iteration of my main blog. The "It" would then be the following themes with which I intend to deal here:
~ history
~ politics, economics, government
~ family tree
~ people, places,
~ culture, society
~ dialogue
and a bit of me

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Thursday, August 9, 2012

Mondragon

Some "Tweeters" have wondered what I have meant by "putting ourselves to work."

If you are curious about what I mean, you can do some checking online. You can start by 'googling' the following:

~ American Cooperative Movement

~ cooperative banking

~ worker cooperative

In the Basque region of Spain is am outstanding example of what I am talking about. It's Mondragon. Check Mondragon at Wikipedia or elsewhere.

At Mondragon you can find a cooperative university, cooperative banks, and a very profitable worker owned manufacturing cooperative. If you look into Mondragon a bit you can gain a good insight into worker owned corporations. You can learn about corporations that are democratically owned and operated.

I believe that today the democratic federation of Mondragon has about 85,000 members who always have good jobs, share in management, and share profits. Members seem to love the excellent pay, the job security, and being owners of the place they work. That's part of what I mean by putting ourselves to work.

I think that the Mondragon is about the tenth largest corporation in Spain. As I remember it was started by a Catholic priest the year I graduated from high school.

2 comments:

As an Amican living in India, I really like your ending question. My first bank account was with my dad's credit union, a coop of sorts. In India there are several examples of very important coops, Amul's dairy coop is one of the most successful. Yet, there still seems to be a scale problem. Thoughts?

There is no teaching for rule in our public schools. Sad and dangerous.How do you see a scale problem? I see a great problem of will before we can test problems of scale.Joining a credit union and making time to attend meetings may be a way for Americans to learn about co-ops.Thanks for the great comment.